


Hospitality

by fallen_woman



Category: Mad Men
Genre: Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-01-15
Updated: 2010-01-15
Packaged: 2017-10-06 07:27:43
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,585
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/51174
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fallen_woman/pseuds/fallen_woman
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Don catches ill, and Trudy nurses him back to health in her own, um, special way.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hospitality

  
  
  
**Entry tags:** |   
[fic](http://fallen-woman.livejournal.com/tag/fic), [mad men](http://fallen-woman.livejournal.com/tag/mad+men)  
  
---|---  
  
_ **Fic: Hospitality** _

Title: Hospitality  
Fandom: Mad Men  
Pairing: Don/Trudy/Pete  
Rating: NC-17  
Word Count: ~2,500  
Summary: Don catches ill, and Trudy nurses him back to health in her own, um, special way.

Campbell, the little shit, infected him a week into January, when the holidays were no longer an excuse for a fallow schedule. Don stumbled into the hotel suite at 11 a.m. with watery eyes, a pinging headache, and a grapefruit-sized soreness fisted in his throat.

Peggy's eyes flickered up warily. "I don't think you should be here."

Don rubbed a hand across his Adam's apple and set down his briefcase by Campbell's vacant chair. "I'm fine, Peggy."

"No, I mean—" Peggy brought up one corner of her blue silk scarf to cover her mouth. "It's not good if more of us get sick. Pete tried to work through it, and he passed it on to you."

"Jennifer's laid out with the flu," Harry called from the doorway to the bedroom. "I come here to escape that dingy hospital feeling. It's all over the house. For such a skinny woman, you'd be surprised how much she—"

"Hello everyone!" Trudy swung open the door, holding a box of small oranges against her hip. The cuffs of her fur coat were speckled with snowflakes. "I brought Clementines today. They're seedless, so you can eat them at your desk without making a mess."

Peggy took two oranges and returned to her seat; Harry grabbed four, and retreated to the bedroom. Trudy walked to the coffee table, nudging the typewriter several inches. "I'll just place the crate here, so Roger, Lane, and Bert can help themselves after their lunch meetings."

"Thank you, Trudy." Don tried very hard not to croak.

"Don!" The petite woman instantly wheeled on him, hair bouncing. "You sound horrible! You must have caught that bug that Peter had."

"I'll be fine. You know how it is—I can't afford to not work." He glanced pointedly at Peggy, who darted her head back down.

"Well, if you don't have any client meetings scheduled for today, why don't you work from home?" Trudy brisked around the room, moving lamps and empty teacups. It was Joan's day off; over the past several weeks the women had developed a tacit agreement in which Joan conducted (prospective hires, material purchases, simple book keeping) and Trudy bustled (tea, sliced bagels, fresh flowers). "Most enthusiastic back-up dancer I've ever seen," Roger marveled, and Don had to agree.

Don shut his eyes, imagined the dusty blankness of his apartment. "It's hard to work at home."

"Oh!" Trudy stopped. "Why don't you stay at our place? It'll be peace and quiet; I can cook in our own kitchen, and I can be your secretary if you need one."

"That's… really an imposition." He sneezed, tightened his grip on the back of the couch between them. Trudy tilted her head and crossed her arms.

"Nonsense! I've done the same for Peter the last two days; it wouldn't be any trouble at all. It's the least we could do, after leaving you indisposed."

His mouth went dry; he couldn't think. Trust a Campbell to have no sense of private space. "I don't have any clothes with me."

"Don't worry about that! I'll just call the front desk and have something comfortable brought up for you." Trudy reached for the table drawer underneath the generic landscape painting. "I believe Joan keeps everyone's clothing measurements in here."

"You put our sizes on record?" Peggy blurted from her desk.

"Ah! Here we go." Trudy held up a pink index card. "What do you say, Don?"

This was all wrong. There were a hundred plausible reasons, a hundred pleasant equivocations, that would easily excuse him from spending a day or more in the care of the Campbells. Unfortunately, under the earnest thrust of Trudy's eyelashes and the quiet eavesdropping of Peggy and the impotent squirm of his swollen throat, he couldn't conjure one.

"I have to make some calls first."

"Of course!" Trudy beamed. "I'll be waiting for you in the lobby, and we can take the cab together." She paused. "Peggy, make sure he actually leaves."

Peggy's grin was entirely too wide for Don's liking, although that could have been the orange slice in her mouth. "Yes, Trudy."

As the door closed, he sank on the couch and palmed a Clementine, rolling it in his hands.

"She's very persuasive." Peggy swept her ragged orange peel into the waste bin.

"How did I get sick and not you? You're the one who shares a desk with him."

The scent of citrus, as Peggy bit into her second orange. "I make an effort not to touch him."

**********

If the cab ride didn't cement the inherent awkwardness of the situation, Don acutely felt the impact of his poor choice as he stood in the threshold, briefcase in one hand and Pierre-monogrammed sleepwear in the other, while Trudy called out, "Darling, I have a surprise for you!"

Then: Peter Campbell with mussed hair, in paisley pajamas, exclaiming "Don" in a pitch that dangerously approximated a squeak, with an expression that dangerously approximated delight. "Are you staying over?"

"You better be sick this time," Don growled, moving past him.

**********

Don had never thought much of Trudy Campbell. Her chirpiness, her swingy fashionability. It was unnerving. Roger, for some reason, adored her: A time ago, before the divorce with Mona, the elder man had claimed Trudy as his second-favorite wife. After Betty, of course.

Despite his misgivings, the rest of the afternoon and dinner had been acceptable. He frowned over Gillette with Pete. Bert called, with updates. Trudy spread an ivory quilt over the olive couch and said goodnight.

When he awoke, Pete had already left for work. "I think having you here lifted his spirits," Trudy said, placing a tray in front of him. Thin chicken soup, hot water, and scoops of vitamins. Don grimaced, and starting rifling through stacks of Pampers market research.

Sometime around noon, when the text started to melt together, he noticed a grey-green hardbound book, with gold-edged pages, at the foot of the coffee table. "The history of the lives and secret intrigues of the wives of the twelve Caesars," he read.

"—of those of the other Roman emperors, and of the princesses of their blood: in which are introduced the most remarkable transactions of the Roman history," Trudy recited, as she lifted his desecrated food tray. Today, she was wearing a loose gray sweater and navy pants. "Peter bought it for me, when he received that promotion to Head of Accounts. I don't think he realized I read it before, in college."

"I didn't take you for a history buff."

"It was my major, actually." Trudy walked to the kitchen. Don opened the book. It smelled fresh, like it never had been read. She came back, wiping her hands on a dish towel. "The classics."

"Men in bed sheets, stabbing each other."

She smiled, running the dish towel over the black surface of the coffee table. "My Latin was terrible. But there's this entire universe. And at the end of the day, you can close it up in a book and put it away."

"That's one way of looking at it." He stroked the embossed logo on the title page. She perched at his shoulder.

"I wanted to be a teacher, when I was younger." Her voice was lower, now. "Daddy said that wasn't proper—he was right, of course."

Don coughed, trying to imagine away the wavy brown hair, the slender frame, the worn sweater. If she noticed the twitch in his face, Trudy didn't say anything, and merely patted his shoulder.

That night, she prepared a bath, with lavender oil. Don hated the smell of lavender. Nevertheless, he drifted in and out of consciousness, and by the time Pete came home, he was fully asleep in the tub. He dreamed of Betty at twenty-three in a green scarf, picking apples with him in New Hampshire. The relaxed bent of her body on the ladder, as if for once she were completely unaware of being watched. Laughing as she lobbed apples at him and missed.

(Or maybe that was some other woman, some other time.)

**********

Only two days in, and he had already become inured to the sound of Trudy's voice.

She had just come back, from getting her handbags dry-cleaned. "Did you have any trouble when I was gone?"

Don barely moved from his seat at the dining table, the phone in his lap. He would have to double up his calendar for the following week, to make up for his absence. "I'm like a cat. Just set out a bowl of milk for me."

"The way you're sitting, you're going to get a neck ache." Her hands swam to his shoulders, and he tightened. There was something undignified about sitting in pajamas at 5 p.m., with Trudy Campbell pressed against the back of his chair, but he didn't protest.

"I wanted to thank you," Don said, after a minute. "For the Clearasil account."

"Oh?" Her tone was airy, unflappable. She massaged in circles. "Peter did that. You know how men can be, but he patched things up with my father, seeing as—"

"Thank you." He put his hands on top of hers, at the junction where his neck met shoulder, and Peter Campbell walked in.

"Hello, darling!" Without a hitch, she sprang up to peck her husband's cheek. "How was your day?"

Pete fastened his gaze on Don. "It was fine." Then, with the slowness of deliberation, he wound his arms around Trudy's waist, tipped his face into hers. A show kiss, Don noted, the kind with sighing sounds. Trudy giggled pink when he broke the embrace, and she flitted past Don, to the bedroom, to fetch Pete's slippers.

Don looked at the phone, heavy in his lap. Thought fleetingly of teenage hitchhikers in a sullen hotel room, the insistent little gasps of the girl before the boy slugged him in the head. _"Don. I want to come home."_

The Campbells didn't fully shut the bedroom door that night. It disconcerted Don, underneath layers of ivory quilt, how soothing the murmuring, rocking sounds were. How vividly he could see the shy slope of Trudy's breasts, the flex of her back in the darkness. He wasn't supposed to want anything that belonged to Campbell.

**********

The next day, the flu abated. He announced during dinner that he was feeling much better, thank you, and that he would be returning to work tomorrow. To celebrate, they had drinks.

After the third round, Pete went to make more cocktails. Trudy scooted closer to Don on the couch and put a hand on his glass, rubbing the dampened rim with her thumb.

"Are you going to come out and say it?"

"What are you talking about?" Still a committed liar, with those saucer eyes. Even when tipsy. Her gold skirt fanned out, brushing his knee.

"You've been raised right. You're not Jane Sterling." He pulled the glass from her fingers. Some vodka splashed on his left hand. "Why are you doing this?"

She swallowed, dipped a finger to the back of his wet hand, where the wedding band would be. "When I married my husband, my mother took me aside and asked me, 'Does he love you a little more than you love him?' I said no. Even then, I knew."

Talking like this, she looked beautiful. Don stroked a curl of her hair. He knew where this was going, could already taste her perfume and sweat.

"Then, she asked, 'Does he need you more than you need him?' I said yes. And my mother said, 'you might not have a happy marriage, but you will have a successful one.'"

_Successful._ His heart contracted so hard he couldn't meet her eyes, just stared down at the gold brocade of her little party dress, her little seduction dress. She bent her head to his, curls falling into his face. "Please, Don. I love him."

"Okay," he said. "Okay." He stood up, lifting Trudy, and bellowed: "Campbell, get in here!" And when Pete skittered in, pale-faced and shirt undone, Don nodded to Trudy, wound his arms around her waist, and tipped his face into hers.

She was soft, and scared, but she opened her mouth obediently, and by the time he pressed his body flush against hers, she was tugging at his bathrobe, nipping at his neck. He slid onto the couch, bouncing her on his lap. Saw Campbell sitting in the opposite chair, blushing bright.

"Peter, could you help me with this dress?" Trudy said breathily. He got up, slow, and in the lamplight Don could see how irrevocably hard the little shit was.

The dress widened, crumpling down her torso, and Trudy tumbled to her knees, pushing back the coffee table with her feet ("Campbell, move that thing," Don said, and Pete complied). Her fingers fluttered to the drawstring of his pants, then his cock was out in her hand and in her mouth.

"Trudy!" He pulled back, cupped her chin. "Not—not this. Not you." She lowered her eyelashes and crossed her arms over her breasts.

"Don's right. Not you, Trudy." And Jesus, Campbell had gone hard all over, his voice, his face, his sullen bright blue eyes as he strode up to Don and kneeled. "Me," he said as he grabbed Don's cock. "Me," he said as he lapped the length, testing, before he sucked Don in, like a treat that would get snatched away if he didn't have it right now. And all the while, Trudy was at Don's side, kissing along his chest, guiding his hand between her legs, whispering "thank you, thank you."

**********

They moved to the bedroom. There were condoms placed on each pillow, like mints. Pete colored. "It was Trudy's idea."

Trudy pouted in the middle of unbuttoning her husband's shirt. "Dear, I believe Don would want us to be responsible adults," she said, with a forceful tug on his pants at the word "adults."

Don smiled, rolled the condom on himself. "Yes, that's very, er, thoughtful of you."

"See?" Trudy tossed her head sitting up, and wrapped her arms around Don as he slid into her.

"Whatever," Pete said, and suckled at her neck. They could be siblings, Don thought, and nearly came at the idea.

Afterward, Trudy pulled Pete's discarded shirt around her and attempted to smooth her hair. "Well. Would anybody like a glass of water?"

"I'm fine." Campbell was curled around him like a cat and showed no indications of letting go. Trudy gave her husband a meaningful look. "In that case. I'm going to wash up." She shut the bathroom door, all the way.

Pete shifted sleepily in bed. "I didn't tell Trudy about the box, Don. I would never."

Don pulled the sheets up, over the two of them. "That was a lifetime ago. Tomorrow, this—" he paused—"will be a lifetime ago."

"I know," Pete said, and Don wondered how his eyes could be so bright even in the dark. "Don, I…"

"Go to sleep, Pete. We'll have breakfast tomorrow."

Sometime in the middle of the night, Don woke up. Pete was crushed against his left side, breathing fitfully, smelling of stickiness and musk. Trudy lay on her back, barely touching him. He turned his head, rubbed his cheek against her hair. She smelled like apples.


End file.
